In an attempt to end plunging approval ratings - and win favor in an election year - the Senate passed an insider trading ban yesterday (Thursday) preventing Congress members from profiting from non-public information.
The Senate passed the bill in a 96-3 vote. U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-VA, said the House would consider the bill next week. U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to sign it immediately.
Congress members hope the new law will change growing American disgust with Congressional perks and partisanship, which has hammered approval ratings down to the teens.
"The numbers of people who have a favorable impression of this body are so low that we're down to close relatives and paid staff. And I'm not so sure about the paid staff," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-CT, said earlier this week.
The insider trading ban prevents members of Congress, top aides, and administrative officials from using non-public information when trading. Any stock bought or sold must be disclosed in a public report online within 30 days.
Several last-minute amendments added to the insider trading ban include:
CBS News' "60 Minutes" aired a story on Congress insider trading in November 2011. The show's segment fueled support for the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act, first proposed in 2007.
Prior to the "60 Minutes" report, the bill only had four supporters in Congress. That number grew to 230 by last week.
The "60 Minutes" program featured an interview with Peter Schweizer, a fellow at Stanford University's conservative think tank the Hoover Institution. Schweizer has extensively reviewed Congress members' financial disclosure records to find out how our elected representatives manage to accumulate so much wealth while in office.
Schweizer found that congressional representatives were trading stocks related to hot topics being discussed and debated in Congress before information had been disclosed to the public.
"We know that during the health care debate people were trading health care stocks," Schweizer told "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft. "We know that during the financial crisis of 2008 they were getting out of the market before the rest of America really knew what was going on."
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